Monday, October 15, 2012

we are "enjoying" the last day of our four day weekend over here. give a girl a month and half of all 4 kids in school and my how i forget so quickly how it is to have them around.every.waking.moment.of.the.day.
anwho
last year i was all humbug about the holidays. i think i was trying to get my life more simplistic from having a tumultuous 6 months of moving and crazyiness that we were in as a family. decorating for each holiday didn't fall in the "simplistic" category last year as we were still trying to find couches, get in the routine of a new state, a new school, and new time zone, and new EVERYTHING...this year, though my life is far from crazy...okay wait. maybe crazy isnt the right word to use...my life is busy... i do find myself wanting to make the holidays kind of fun. soooo i made this fun runner last week in prep for the upcoming holiday. the kids thought it was cool. the third noise maker said "did you know that spiders make webs out of their butts?" to which the girl noisemaker was like "EWWWWW!!!"

*sigh* yup.

anywho

i'm not a huge fan of cartoonish looking decor, like ever...i decided a spiderwebbed table runner might be cool, i experimented and then liked it enough, so i decided to make a how to on it.

1.first take your ruler and pen and draw a couple of large Xs on one of your linen 15" x WOF pieces.

(hint: it's helpful to keep in mind how spiderwebs work: they usually have to be attached to an edge or to each other. )

2. also drew a couple of small X's in the corners or on the sides here and there.

3. once you have your X's placed out, start drawing a few more lines, having a few connect and stop at the other spider web's lines.

4. draw slightly curved lines starting from the most inside part of the web.
**remember webs aren't perfect! with wind and weather they aren't perfectly even lines! :)

continue to draw your curved lines...

5. once all your spiderwebs are done grab your batting and second 15"xWOF piece of linen and sandwich them linen, batting, spiderweb linen.

6. baste your runner with your pins.

7. pick a stitch on your sewing machine.
on this bernina i had a lot of options but i went with just a basic #7 because i thought it would show up better than a smaller stitch...and i'm still learning all the ins and outs on the machine...so i didn't want to complicate things for myself just yet.
of course if you have lots of options on your sewing machine play around on a practice piece of fabric to see what other stitches would go good. (if you make one of these make sure you post them in the V and Co flicker!!! )

CREATING THE SPIDER WEBS
first things first, we are going to treat this like we were quilting the runner, so here are some steps that are kind of important. :)
1. position your needle over your drawn line.
2. holding the top thread so it doesnt go anywhere, place your needle in the downward position.

3. and then bring up the needle again. (you are basically doing ONE stitch)

4. when you look under the foot you should see the bobbin thread.

5. pull out your bobbin thread.

6. holding both threads now start to stitch on your drawn line.
7. repeat these last few steps EVERY time you you stop and start up again a new place in your spider webbing stitching.

8. slightly guide the fabric in a curved line to follow your curved line, go slow if you need to.

9. as you quilt more of your runner, remove the pins as you go. :)
10. continue till you finish all your lines!!!

I totally agree with your third noisemaker ;-) Just lately the man of the house and I watched a spiderman movie and joked they should show spiderman make his web like a 'real' spider, biologically correct, not out of his hand!! :-D

I think this would be really pretty for christmas too. Simple linen with green stitching for either one big tree or several smaller trees. Maybe with some sort of applique on there (like a red bird, or star, or something). So many possibilities.

What a really simple but cool project! I was wondering if you had any trouble with stitching and not using a walking foot. Or can you not use a walking foot because you doing decorative stitches and it requires you to use that particular foot?

veronicamade: i didn't use a walking foot and had no problem because i pinned everything down, but i'm sure you can mess around with it on some practice fabric and see if it helps, or if it's not necessary! :)

You know, I also noticed that you were using a "regular" 1C foot instead of a walking foot for quilting, but then I remembered that the 7 series has a built in dual feed thingy. Were you using that feature on this project or any others while The Beast was in your midst? Is it all it's cracked up to be?

I love your project! I usually like anything with spider webs as long as they are tastefully done like this. And the stitch pattern you picked out on your machine is really interesting. I might have missed something but can you explain more about how those pens work and how you erase the lines? Do you do it after stitching or do they just fade with time? Thanks for the info!Love all your projects that I've seen so far!